When I have the SUM function in place on a column of numbers it returns “0”. For example I’m trying to capture number of students in attendance… but when the cell at the bottom of the column of numbers has =SUM(C2:C80)… I get a zero?!? Any advice?
It is likely that the numbers in your column are actually text - toggle View | Value Highlighting, or press Ctrl-F8. Numbers will show in blue, formulae as green and text as black.
Is it possible that you have imported a .csv file and not checked “Detect special numbers” on the Text Import dialog - or pasted without using paste special?
Text to columns can be used to convert the text to numbers. See F1 Help for information.
Relying on the automatic type conversion =SUM(0+C2:C80) should also do. Of course, explicit conversion is preferable if there aren’t unmentioned reasons.
That was it Robleyd… although I had changed the cells from text to numbers… each number still had a ’ in front of it… the text to numbers tool did the trick! Thank you…
Changing the format of a cell doesn’t automatically change the content of the cell.